When m/SIX Met The Mix at Rich Mix

The whole media agency took a day out to generate ideas for the young people’s support charity

Last week full service media agency m/SIX closed the entire agency to host a charity away day in partnership with their client, The Mix.

The Mix is a young people’s charity which offers support and advice for people under 25 struggling with issues including mental illness, sex and relationship concerns, drink and drugs problems, financial, career and academic worries and more. They are a first point of contact to help with any challenge a young person is facing.

Staff from m/SIX and The Mix converged at Rich Mix cinema in Bethnal Green, London, on March 1st, defying the icy weather. They were split into teams and set the task of of coming up with five different creative media-activation ideas to target The Mix’s audience of 13- to 25-year-olds and get them engaged with the charity.

The idea was to offer the agency’s expertise in all areas of media and fundraising, but also to give their people time to think about something other than work and to help young people and the charity.

The day began with presentations from Chris Martin, CEO of The Mix and Jess Burley, Global Chief Executive of m/SIX, a Trustee of The Mix, in which they explained the aims of the charity and how it helps young people.

The groups broke off, got to know each other and set about coming up with creative ideas to engage with The Mix’s audience. At the end of the day they presented their ideas back to the rest of the group, who then voted for a winner.

Ideas included:

- Delivery service at festivals - add an extra £1 to your order at a festival and a volunteer from The Mix will deliver your food to you, perfect for those rainy days when you want to mooch in your tent. That money goes towards the Mix

- Utilising different stages of a young person’s ‘financial life’ to give them access to The Mix, such as working with banks to communicate with people when they reach their overdraft, or when young people start in the world of work

- The Mix have already developed a Triage tool that uses AI to understand sentiment of questions being asked and points people in the right direction of content they need. One idea was to leverage this tool but make it more accessible by harnessing it in common social media chatting tools such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat and even dating app chats using chatbot technology and personifying The Mix Triage tool

- Creating a gamification app which helps young people get help around mental issues in a more informal way that suits their communicate style

- Creating a youth movement around ‘real mates’ to encourage more men to talk about and address their mental health issues

Chris Martin, CEO of The Mix, said: “It was fantastic to see teams from m/Six and The Mix staff working together to tackle some of the significant challenges faced by young people. The teams produced solutions that sought to harness services design, media outreach and young people themselves to take on drugs, fundraising, sex and mental health. The day was a testament to what can be achieved when you put subject experts together with top creative talent for just a few hours.”

Siobhan Brunwin, Head of People at m/SIX, said: “Having the opportunity to step out of our day jobs and focus on working with The Mix for a full day was an absolute pleasure for us all. We all learnt so much about the challenges that young people are currently facing, and working with teams from The Mix our m/Sixers created some really creative, unique and sustainable responses to their business challenges. m/Six has had a phenomenal year of growth so it was a brilliant opportunity to get all our people working and mixing together in a different, fun and rewarding way. Giving back is really important to m/Six and its people, we give our employees an additional day’s annual leave a year to use to volunteer for a charitable cause of their choice and we hope this will be the first of many annual charity away days for us, and that we continue to work and grow our relationship with The Mix”